Shortly before a private spaceflight company’s test rocket exploded over southern Texas last weekend, state lawmakers announced millions in subsidies to get the company to continue launching rockets in the Lone Star State.

A billionaire Obama donor trying to break into a market for Defense Department contracts says he will save taxpayers millions, but military officials and defense policy observers warn he could end up costing the country money and leaving the Pentagon reliant on an industry greenhorn.

Looking for a distraction from the government shutdown and debt ceiling debate? I urge you to read Vanity Fair’s latest advertisement for “The New Establishment,” a list of “50 Titans Disrupting Media, Technology, and Culture,” the century-old magazine’s annual mash-note to the rich and powerful and self-satisfied. These disrupters innovate technologies, set the trends, define the limits of acceptable conversation in culture and politics and society, and pour money into the network of liberal foundations and Democratic campaigns around which our world is increasingly organized. They are the winners in the cognitive lottery that is the New Economy, the men and women creating and shaping, by accident and by design, the “New Feudalism” described so well by Joel Kotkin in The Daily Beast. It’s good to know their names.

Elon Musk, the potential energy secretary nominee, major President Barack Obama donor, and technology entrepreneur behind SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and PayPal, has purchased a $17 million mansion in Bel-Air as reported by the Los Angeles Times.